Cambridge Jobseeker felt “humiliated and degraded” by YMCA Training

We have been biased in our coverage of YMCA Training by only including experiences of the Ipswich provided New Deal courses. Well… it is no better in Cambridge!! (this training centre is also included in the same New Deal contract as the Ipswich one) One New Deal participant spoke out against his disappointment of expecting to be given a work placement (as promised by Jobcentre Plus to get you enrolled) and be given a course of watching DVD’s, paper contests and walks.

Feel free to read the Department for Work and Pensions attempt to justify YMCA Training’s activities when New Deal participants should have been stuck in a work placement 4 days a week and been given supported jobsearch.

A JOBSEEKER said he felt humiliated after attending a training course for the unemployed which involved watching DVDs, walks in the park and making models out of newspaper.

The man, who asked to remain anonymous, was told to take a course at YMCA Training, a national charity with a centre on St Andrew’s Street, Cambridge, as part of the New Deal programme, which is funded by the taxpayer.

He believed the course would offer immediate work placements that could lead to a permanent job. But he said the course, which runs from 9.30am-5pm five days a week, involves tutors showing films such as Die Hard, setting contests to build towers from old newspapers, and taking course members on walks around Christ’s Pieces and the Fitzwilliam Museum.

The man, who has been searching for a job through Cambridge JobCentre since being laid off two years ago, said he felt “humiliated and degraded” by the activities.

(c) Cambridge News Online

Breach of contract?

No, the shallow weak-minded individuals at the Government’s largest department which is swamped in corruption took the place of their partner YMCA Training rather than “customer” Anonymous (and his fellow inmates: all “customers” of Jobcentre Plus) and stated the following:

YMCA Training helps people break down their barriers to work – this involves developing a range of skills including teamwork and confidence building and healthy living.

What a bunch of nonsense!

Do they think these jobseekers are children at school?

Healthy living?

What gives them the legal right and capacity to lecture adults in what to eat and how to live in an unemployment course?

What job seeker actually can afford to eat healthy? There are no Government subsidies for them to get their 5 a day.

New Deal providers do NOT provide food to participants on New Deal courses other than Gateway 2 Work which this course wasn’t.

Since when was walking (which I do a lot of with walking my dogs) improving your chances of employment?

Since when does “lifestyle” become a skill?

Teamwork?

They might as well sent them home early and let them be able to play football in a park or something.

Concerns: the future of welfare

This obviously doesn’t work anywhere you go. The courses are aimed to improve peoples chances of securing employment. By isolating them from free will to be able to seek and apply for job vacancies during business hours, they are more less likely to secure any form of employment let alone sustainable employment.

These courses reduce the chance of finding employment – but why?

The truth

About 89% of the annual recruitment market in United Kingdom is for temporary jobs. Yes, this is why there are so many recruitment agencies. This is why many of the jobs advertised at the jobcentre dont exist. They dont want you to have sustainable jobs outside a recruitment agency because it would harm the economy out of tens of billions a year. What about benefit claimants? It isn’t a secret they use unlawful techniques to prevent people claiming and the bottom line it isn’t their money! They now realise that outsourcing jobcentres can be a new market.

When not sat around bored witless, getting backache and headache using their ancient computers, being bullied and threatened with sanctions ie benefit loss, in a tutorial learning how to fill out an application form, inmates were forced to play silly games.

Construct a bridge using string and pieces of paper.

One of the worst was crawling under barriers laid across tables. Do this blindfold, backwards, tied to another inmate. One guy did his back in. I quite sensibly refused to participate, risking being sanctioned for ‘disruptive behaviour’.

Humiliating and degrading treatment about sums it up. Breaches of Human Rights Act?